Sunday, May 22, 2016

Will Hillary's campaign try to conciliate Sanders and his supporters?

Hillary Clinton seemed to be trying to strike a more conciliatory stance towards Bernie Sanders and his supporters on Meet the Press this weekend than what we heard last week as she and her campaign and Vice President Joe Biden and the head of the Democratic National Committee were issuing anathemas against Sanders and his voters (Transcript May 22, 2016):

CHUCK TODD:

Is Bernie Sanders now helping Donald Trump?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Oh, I don't think so. I think that Senator Sanders has every right to finish off his campaign however he chooses. I do think there will then be the obvious need for us to unify the party. I faced the same challenge in 2008. I will certainly do my part, reaching out to Senator Sanders, reaching out to his supporters. And I expect him to do his. And he said about a week ago, he was going to spend seven days a week trying to defeat Donald Trump. And I believe that's the case.

Of course, this could be part of a good-cop/bad-cop routine. But the anathema approach really doesn't look promising if she's serious about engaging Sanders voters actively and tapping into his appeal among actual independents.

And I'm still very dubious whether she intends to do that. Partly because of some of the earlier quotes from her that Todd played before the airing of the interview.

And even more so because of what she says in the weekend interview, which Todd says was taped the day before. She does go on to make her standard pitch about how far she is ahead, and how she and Obama were much closer in 2008 than she and Sanders now. But this comes off as disingenuous on her part:

CHUCK TODD:

You don't think Bernie Sanders' been vetted? You don't think this one long year of campaign, your campaign against him, has vetted him?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Let me say that I don't think he's had a single negative ad ever run against him. And that's fine. But we know what we're going into, and we understand what it's going to take to win in the fall. And finally, I would say that, you know, polls this far out mean nothing. They certainly mean nothing to me. And I think if people go back and look, they really mean nothing in terms of analyzing what's going to happen in the fall.

This she says in the same week that she and various Democratic heavyweights put the full-court press on Sanders to drop out of the race immediately, even painting him as responsible for alleged fistfights and chair-throwing at the Nevada convention teh previous weekend - which apparently didn't happen at all - and for death threats the Nevada party chair reported she received, none of which has been identified with any individual, so far as I've heard, much less to the Sanders campaign.

Even more concerning, though, is the segment of the interview in which she floats a slogan for the general election campaign, "Stronger Together," or "We Are Stronger Together." Which I'm sure was extensively market-tested. But this is how she explains the content:

CHUCK TODD:

Bernie Sanders has been talking about a political revolution. A future you can believe in. Obviously, Donald Trump with the Make America Great again, is one of these slogans that has taken off, for better or for worse. If you could sum up, what is the big idea of your candidacy?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Look, we are stronger together. We are stronger together, in facing our internal challenges and our external ones. We are stronger together if we work to improve the economy. And that's going to mean trying to get the Republicans to do what will actually help produce more jobs, like we saw in the 1990s. We are stronger together when we have a bipartisan, even nonpartisan foreign policy that protects our country. And that provides a kind of steady, strong, smart leadership that the rest of the world expects from us.

And I know that, you know, slogans come and go, and all the rest of it. But when I look at where we are in our country together, we need to unify the country. We are stronger together, when we act on a set of plans and priorities that will redound to the benefit of the American people.

CHUCK TODD:

How do you do it? You're a polarizing figure right now, in American politics. You have an unfavorable rating that is almost as high as Donald Trump's. How do you do it?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Well, it's not as high. And I--

CHUCK TODD:

No, it's not. But it's pretty high--

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Well, look, if you got-- but he's done-- he's gotten--

CHUCK TODD:

You're pretty polarizing. He's polarizing.

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Well--

CHUCK TODD:

How do you do it, if you're elected president? This is a polarized country.

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Just the way-- just the way I did it when I was first lady, senator, and secretary of state. When I have these jobs, Chuck, I actually get things done. And I work with people across the aisle. Honestly, I worked with Republicans in the '90s to create the Children's Health Insurance Program. And I worked with Tom DeLay, the Hammer in the House, to reform adoption and foster care. I worked with practically every Republican.

And I worked as secretary of state to get things done. To reduce nuclear weapons, for example, between Russia and myself. So I have a track record. And I'm going to remind people of that. Because it's not just rhetoric, for me. When I was secretary of state, I had a very high approval rating, as you can go back and check. Because I was doing a job that people could see. When I get into the arena, and all of the negativity that's been thrown at me for 25 years is recycled and put out there, I know I've got work to do. But I'm very confident that it's going to be successful.

CHUCK TODD:

I know we're over, but I got a couple more questions. Number one, you said Bill Clinton, you were going to basically put him in charge of getting this economy going again. What does that mean?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Well, what I said--

CHUCK TODD:

What did you mean?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

--well, what I said in Kentucky and West Virginia is that there are parts of our country that have been left out and left behind for too long. And I am going to ask my husband, who has a great track record in creating jobs, putting people to work, revitalizing communities, to be in an advisory role working with me, working with our cabinet, to try to figure out what we can do. You know, every first lady has taken on special projects. And I think my husband's understanding of how to get this economy moving in places that have been left behind will be incredibly valuable.

CHUCK TODD:

Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have been running against some of the economic policies of the '90s. Trade, Wall Street deregulation, things like that. Does that concern you?

SEC. HILLARY CLINTON:

Well, they're not running against 23 million new jobs. They're not running against incomes going up for every American, not just those at the top. They're not running against median family income going up 17 percent, and for African-Americans 33 percent, and living [lifting?] more people out of poverty. And ending up with a balanced budget and a surplus.

Now, I have said I want to renegotiate NAFTA. I voted against the only multinational trade deal that came before me when I was in the Senate. I have stated my opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, based on what it was negotiated to include.

So I'm more than happy to take on that argument. But I ask people, when you criticize the '90s, what do they criticize? The peace, or the prosperity? Because I think a lot of Americans, as I travel around the country, think of that as being a time when they thought they were getting ahead. Then we ran smack dab into the failed Republican economic policy. [my emphasis]

My own optimism for the Democrats winning in November, even for the Presidency, sinks every time I hear some form of, "I work with people across the aisle" coming from Hillary. It also sinks every time a Democrat utters the words, "balanced budget."

The line, "But I ask people, when you criticize the '90s, what do they criticize? The peace, or the prosperity?" is a catchy one. And of course Clinton needs to defend the positive parts of the record of Clinton's and Obama's Administrations. But surely she hasn't forgotten those helpful Republicans in those glory days of bipartisan harmony impeached Bill Clinton in an attempt to remove him from office.

Still, the emphasis comes off as one of complacency, of comforting the comfortable. It doesn't convey a sense of focus on problems or on why only the Democrats can solve them. On the contrary, she's saying that working "across the aisle" is needed to solve those problems. There's a conservative tone to it, in other words, and maybe that will be enough against Trump. And it continues the very damaging habit we've seen during eight years of the Obama Administration to frame issues in the Republicans' preferred terms rather than building a distinct Democratic brand. Facing what looks more every day like it will be a Republican Party united behind Trump, a message of comforting the comfortable and At Least She's Not A Republican But She Works Across The Aisle With Them doesn't sound like an exciting approach to me.

It also sounds like the kind of strategy that puts a low priority on conciliation Sanders and his supporters, or on making particular appeals to them, or on getting out the younger Sanders voters in November. And that's not a good sign.

But Bill Moyers and Michael Winship have a good idea for a conciliatory move: Democrats Can’t Unite Unless Wasserman Schultz Goes!Moyers & company 05/20/2016. Even if Debbie Wasserman Shultz hadn't used her position as party chair to crassly favor Hillary's primary campaign and issued her ridiculous May 17 anathema against Bernie and his supporters, she's been a lousy party chair. The best friend of the payday-loan business, she hasn't made anything like a serious enough effort to put up Democratic challengers in the states, not even in Congressional districts where Democrats have a reasonable shot to unseating Republicans during this Trump year. (See David Dayen, Is Retaking the House a Democratic Pipe Dream?New Republic 03/23/2016: "To take advantage of the Republicans’ terrible choice at the top of the ticket, Democrats would have to actually run candidates for the House who can win.") And, in fact, if you're looking to help the exploitative payday-loan borderline loan shark business rip off even more people, you probably prefer to have a Republican-dominated Congress. Because "working across the aisle" is a trademark for ConservaDems like Wasserman Shultz.

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